THE NEW YORKER 31 his spare time haranguing his own father about the sense- lessness of the Union Pacific in not establishing airlines to carry mail and freight. "I had him hanging on the ropes," he says, and shakes his head as he recalls a morning when he drove his father, by then chairman of the board of Union Pacific and Carl Gray, the new president, to their office in a snappy roadster he had just bought. During the drive he talked about the air-mail and air- freight idea until the two old- er men, beaten, agreed to have a survey made to find out whether the plan was practicable. Lovett dropped them off and arrived at his own office just as his tele- phone rang and his father's voice, simmering along the wire, said, "Have you seen this ., T k mornIng s paper. ... a e a look at page one." Lovett, holding the wire, took a look at page one and saw a picture of an airplane which had crashed into ex-Governor Sulzer's house in New Jer- sey. The tail of the plane was sticking out of the roof. "Well, that might happen once in a thousand times," Lovett said into the telephone. "Once is enough!" his father hollered, and hung up. Some years later, after Gray and Lovett, Sr., had died, Robert Lovett be- came a director of the Union Pacific. By that time, though, legislation had made it impossible for railroads to operate air- lines which had mail contracts. Lovett still mourns the freak of circumstance that ruined his idea. Probably no man has ever been more thoroughly compensated for a lost hope, however. As Assistant Secretary of War for Air, Lovett has been concerned for the past two years not only with the reorganization of the Army Air Forces and the mass production of military planes but with the use of planes as car- riers in a far flashier way than he ever dreamed of for the Union Pacific. He and General Arnold have been given major credit for establishing the Air Transport Command, which is respon- sible for delivering finished planes and matériel to the fighting fronts around the world. Lovett, speaking calmly and looking like a banker, likes to tell about an exploit the Air Transport Command pulled off only a few months after it be- ... ". '. ",.' ',f;;;i Wi?,i.: w ;:' i t 4)i.)::J i "'7':; J;' :; i. ]( . "I. " \.:n.v.""" j) . ...., ttIo " , ':./ '.l./(... . . 0<< ((N ow in transcribing- the log, Weldon, you iF/ust stick to the official wording. We don't say, 'Fluffy white clouds in a cerulean sky.' >> . gan functioning. At one stage of Rom- mel's drive into Egypt, before he started his epic retreat, the speed of his advance resulted in the destruction of certain ammunition stores of the United Na- tions. The Allies were consequently des- perately short of anti-tank shells. If they had not received a supply, the results would have been disastrous. The Air Transport Command delivered twenty- five thousand pounds of anti-tank am- munition from the United States to the front in Egypt in five days. When Lovett talks about things like that, or about the fact that America's output of planes has increased from be- tween thirty-five and forty-five hundred a month last December to around eight thousand a month today, his calmness and his resemblance to a banker gradu- ally fade and he is apt to leap from his chair and take a quick turn up and down the green carpet in his office in the Pentagon Building. It is not enthusiasm that sets him to pacing, but a vast and mildly profane impatience for more and faster achievements. Although he insistently disclaims even a share of the credit for the long-range bombIng pro- gram which the Allies have been follow- ing with overwhelming success, he has . been well known in Washington for more than two years as a plugger for the long-range bombers, otherwise known as the B-17 (the Flying Fortress) and the B-24 (the Liberator). As long ago as May, 1941, seven months before Pearl Harbor, he told a reporter, "I know that we don't know just who we're going to fight, or just where, but what the hell difference does that make? We're going to fight someone and we're not going to do it in our own front yard. We're going to go get them, and nothing goes and gets like the Flying Fortress." A year later, with the United States in the war, he was still wearing out his office carpet. "We have never used airpower so far in this war," he told a reporter. "They tell you you can't lick Germany with airpo'Yer, that it can't be done. How the hell do they know? It's never been tried. The hell with the past. OUf big stuff is the on- ly thing that can deliver itself to any goddam place in the world and go right into combat. That's one reason I believe in the bomber-high-Ievel, glide, dive, and every other goddam kind." Lovett appears to have a long-range effectiveness himself. A year after his re- marks to the reporter about the need for